“This is a nice bridge ya got here. It’d be a shame if somethin’ happened to it.”

If New Jersey is trying to shed its mafia image, the Chris Christie administration isn’t helping.

Wednesday’s revelations that a senior New Jersey official deliberately snarled traffic at the George Washington Bridge — in retaliation for a local mayor’s refusal to endorse Gov. Christie’s re-election — smack of the political equivalent of mafia “protection.” Pay us off with a political endorsement, and nothing will happen to your nice little bridge. If not, well, ...

Of course, no one uttered the quote at the top of this piece, but it captures the spirit of the scandal. Some of the emails and texts sent back and forth among the New Jersey officials are just about as bad.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” wrote Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff whom Christie fired today, to a high school friend of the governor who worked at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge.

Two lanes onto the bridge were then closed, turning Fort Lee, N.J., into a virtual parking lot for four days in September.

When another official expressed concern that school buses full of children were stopped in the gridlocked traffic, the Port Authority official texted, “They are the children of Buono voters,” referring to Barbara Buono, Christie’s opponent in the November gubernatorial election.